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The Brooch
Mrs. Prendergast’s story about the baby in the baking dish represents Isobel’s own traumatic childhood. Mrs. Prendergast tells Isobel about the time when her neighbor’s husband walked into the kitchen to see his wife casually seasoning their greased and trussed-up baby in a baking dish, ready to place it into the preheated oven. The neighbor’s nonchalant desire to cook her baby alive echoes the blatant cruelty and violent anger that Isobel’s mother constantly unleashed upon Isobel while she was growing up. Isobel must accept the fact that perhaps she will never be able to fully understand or explain what happened to her in her childhood—perhaps one day, her own trauma will be an absurd, dark anecdote told over tea just like the baby in the baking dish.
The Baby in the Baking Dish Quotes in I for Isobel
The I for Isobel quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Baby in the Baking Dish. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 4 Quotes
''Went very funny after the baby was born. Not the first one either, the third. Joe that would have been, got grown-up sons himself now. She was very bad for a while. She came out of it all right in the end.”
“I'm glad to hear that.” Mrs. Bowers' tone admitted that Mrs. Prendergast was not often the bringer of good news.
“It can take you in funny ways. There was the woman lived opposite us in Mudgee. Six weeks old the baby was and they were getting ready to go out. Her husband called out from the door, ‘Are you coming, Dorrie?’ ‘I won't be a minute, dear, I'm just popping the baby in the oven.’ He came running in and there was the baby greased all over and trussed up in the baking dish and the oven hot. He just got to it in time.”
Mrs. Bowers shrieked, 'Oh, my God!'
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Mrs. Prendergast often shares her slightly unsettling dreams and stories with Mrs. Bowers and Isobel during their days and nights in the boarding house kitchen. This tale—involving two of Mrs. Prendergast’s former neighbors—stands out as the most upsetting and outlandish one of all. As Isobel listens to the story, it becomes apparent that the baby in the baking dish represents Isobel’s own painful, confusing childhood—a childhood in which her mother threatened her safety and well-being daily. Isobel’s mother’s violence was as strange, uncanny, and seemingly second-nature as that of the woman in the story. It was an almost unthinking, or Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident
Chapter 5 Quotes
The tears were coming slowly. How could tears come from so deep, as if she was a tree with tears welling up from its roots? Then they came in a roaring flood that drowned thought; she put her cheek against the rock, which was as rough as a cat's tongue and unyielding, but she was too far gone to feel any perverse pleasure in that. Her sobs were so loud that even in this wasteland she had to put her hands over her mouth to muffle them; when her mind sobered up her body went on snuffling and heaving along ten years of roadway.
I am a writer. I am a writer.
Too late. It must be too late. The poor little bugger in the baking dish; nobody came in time.
Suppose I tried? Suppose I went through the motions? The writer might come back.
You've tried that with love. It doesn't work.
But that was other people, too. This is me.
The crying had slackened. There was such a feeling of limbs stretching, of hands unbound, she knew she could choose to be a writer. A pen and an exercise book, that was all it took, to be a rotten writer, anyhow. Good or rotten' that came later.
It meant giving in to the word factory. That frightened her, because the word factory was such a menace. Now she understood why the idea of being press-ganged was so alarming.
Oh, well. If you can't lick 'em join 'em.
Maybe that was what the word factory was all about, the poor little bugger trying to get out of the baking dish.
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When Isobel returns to her hometown for an afternoon, she runs into an old neighbor, Mrs. Adams, who unknowingly shows Isobel how severely her parents ruined her childhood. After this visit, Isobel is emotionally wrecked, forced to confront the extent to which her parents filled her with fear and demoralized her to the point of self-loathing. Isobel breaks down as she leaves Mrs. Adams’s house, and she experiences a vast range of emotions as she sinks to the depths of her sorrow and then attempts to pull herself out by finally conceding to give into the “word factory”—the swirling canvas Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas
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The Baby in the Baking Dish Symbol Timeline in I for Isobel
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Baby in the Baking Dish appears in I for Isobel. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 4: Glassware and Other Breakable Items
...of a woman who lived across from her in her old town. When the woman’s baby was six weeks old, she and her husband were getting ready to go out one...
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Chapter 5: I for Isobel
...cat Smoke when she was nine years old. Isobel recalls Mrs. Prendergast’s story of the baby in the baking dish.
(full context)
...the word factory at last, and wonders if it has, all along, been the poor baby trying to get out of the baking dish. Isobel, feeling much better, continues heading through...
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